1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to wireless communication messaging.
2. Related Art
Short Message Service (SMS), SkyMail, Short Mail, Instant Messaging (IM), chat, Mobile Instant Messaging (MiM), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and other messaging services (together, text messaging) are well known. Text messaging is supported by computer devices such as laptop computers, desktop computers, handheld computers, and wireless devices such as cellular telephones, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) terminals, Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) terminals, and Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) terminals, for example. Typically, a text message server serves as an intermediate device for receiving a text message from a source device, storing the text message, and forwarding the text message to a recipient device, e.g., a first cell phone as a source device and a second cell phone as a recipient device. While some text message service providers charge for text message support, e.g., cellular networks, other text message service providers support text messaging without charge. Various protocols such as SS7, GSM MAP, or TCP/IP, for example, may be employed to support text messaging.
With IM, two or more IM enabled devices, having knowledge of each other's network locations or network identities, support the transmission and receipt of text messages. An IM session may include the transfer of numerous messages back and forth between the devices. Further, with IM, an IM group may be setup in which messages are interchanged between more than two devices, i.e., each text message originates from a source device and is transmitted to multiple recipient devices.
SMS is often used by wireless service providers to send information to serviced wireless devices. For example, a service provider may send a short message to one or more serviced wireless devices relating information regarding a user's account, regarding services that the wireless service provider employs, advertisements, or other information. These text messages are in a language selected by the wireless service provider. However, users of wireless devices do not always speak or read the language of the text message. In such case, the user of the wireless device simply disregards the message or seeks an individual to learn of the content of the message that the user cannot read. Thus, the user must either disregard what may be important information contained in the text message or go to extra efforts to learn of content of the text message, which may be unimportant. Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.